Before joining USAID’s Cambodia Mission’s organic wildlife-friendly rice program under IBIS Rice, Si Rany faced challenges with accessing markets and unstable prices. She joined the program after learning that IBIS Rice protects forests and endangered species while fetching a premium price for organic jasmine rice. USAID is partnering with the Cambodia NGO Sansom Mlup Prey to expand the reach of IBIS Rice from 15 to 22 villages around Siem Pang, Lomphat, and Keo Seima Wildlife Sanctuaries.

The IBIS Rice model has improved the livelihoods of more than 1,100 households like Rany’s by paying organic rice farmers premium prices for their commitments to adhere to basic conservation commitments like no hunting, cutting forests, or clearing land in these protected areas. “I am happy with the results, because I know our rice is chemical-free and we can sell it for a higher price,” said Rany.

Photo Credit: Sambo Chheng / USAID Morodok Baitang

Location: Khes Kroam village, Prek Meas commune, Siem Pang district, Stung Treng province, Cambodia

Fishing is a main source of livelihood for the Tharu Indigenous community that live along the rivers such as the Rapti in the southern plains of Nepal. Fishers were key beneficiaries of the USAID Paani (which means “water” in Nepali) Program, which helped form, organize, strengthen capacity, and mobilize community aquatic animal conservation groups.

Under Paani, multiple users of the river systems conserve and co-manage river stretches in collaboration with their local governments.

Photo Credit: Sudin Bajracharya / USAID Paani Project

Location: Rapti River Basin, Nepal

Peru’s Amazon forests, with a wide diversity of flora and fauna species, provide several critical ecosystem services for human well-being and health, but these ecosystems are currently threatened. Through the USAID-funded Sustainable Management of Forestry Concessions project, Green Gold Forestry Perú S.A. manages more than three-quarters of a million acres of tropical forest for the conservation and sustainable use of natural resources.

There are 256 species of wildlife under conservation in these forests (large mammals, birds, and reptiles), including 11 in some category of threat such as Endangered (EN), Vulnerable (VU), or Near Threatened (NT) on the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Red List. Some of the identified specimens are the giant otter (EN), the red-billed toucan (VU), and jaguar (NT). This photo shows a Boana lanciformis, an amphibian species found in the conserved forest concessions, which represents a great indicator of fragile ecosystems and an important link in the food chain as an insect predator.

Photo Credit: Carlos Valqui / Green Gold Forestry Perú S.A.

Location: San Regis, Marañón, Loreto, Perú

The Second Indigenous Women’s Fire Brigade is joining efforts to reduce wildfires in the Amazon state of Tocantins in north central Brazil. The group of 40 Apinajé women received intense theoretical and practical training to fight fires, and will use prescribed burning to protect their territory, an area of more than 350,000 acres located between the Araguaia and Tocantins rivers. The National Center for Preventing and Fighting Forest Fires of the Brazilian Institute of the Environment and Renewable Natural Resources and the U.S. Forest Service provided the training with support from USAID/Brazil’s Forest Management and Fire Prevention Program.

The Apinajé Indigenous women’s fire brigade organized additional support from the Casa Socioambiental Fund, the National Indigenous Peoples Foundation, and the municipal governments of Tocantinópolis, Cachoeirinhas, and Maurilândia.

Photo Credit: Bruno Kelly / USAID

Location: Brazil, Tocantins State, Tocantinópolis